TKO President Mark Shapiro took part in the company’s Quarterly Investors Call to talk about a number of topics, including how Minnesota almost got WrestleMania 41 until Las Vegas outbid them.
Shapiro said, “Ari (Emanuel) is really focusing on festivalizing our events. Further than we’re doing it right now. With concerts, the weigh in, culinary taste opportunity, which you see at events like the US Open in New York. Making our events really attractive to the hardcore sports fan, but also making it more of a cultural event. The more we can do that, we can really expand the stay. The event becomes a one-day, two-day, three-day, it really moves from one to three days, which is something that cities have communicated to us that they would like to see more of, and they can spend more from their tourism bureau if we could expand the number of days we come to town. We’re driving it hard in the sense of improving the quality of our overall events with timeline, duration, and the content itself. At the same time, driving a hard bargain and really pitting these cities up against each other. We’re going to Vegas for WrestleMania, but truthfully, we easily could have gone to Minneapolis. In fact, for a while, they looked like the favorite until Vegas came in at the end and trumped them. It’s being really transparent with these cities and local government officials, letting them know what they have to do, using the power of our leverage, our relationships, and the demand for our content to get us the price and the numbers.”
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
